About A Boy
by WolfAtSea
Summary: At the Battle of Hogwarts, Voldemort is turned into his teenage self with no recollection of anything after his fifth year. Soon after, a new threat poses a challenge that perhaps only a Dark Lord can answer. On its quest to regain peace and justice, can Magical Britain choose the lesser evil?
1. Prologue

Prologue

* * *

 _May 20_ _th_ _, 1998_

 _Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

* * *

Red and green hit at the same time.

Harry Potter didn't know what to think the instant before that, when the deadly green spell whirled around and flew towards its caster, except that perhaps this was finally over. That he finally won; finally lived up to his destiny as the vanquisher of the Dark Lord. But probably not, given his luck. He should have known something was about to go wrong.

The moment before _that_ , when Harry yelled "Expeliarmus", he was thinking straighter. He was thinking how he didn't want to kill a man, however much evil that man had brought, however inhuman that man had become. This wasn't a purely intellectual debate on capital punishment that he might engage with Hermione when they weren't hunting for horcruxes or fighting or running for dear life. The fact of the matter was simple: Harry didn't believe it was his place to decide when and how a man died, born to be the Saviour of the Light or not. Maybe it was the right of the Supreme Wizarding Court to decide. Maybe it was the right of the powers that be. Maybe it was no one's right. Riddle could feel no remorse, so he had to die before he could hurt anyone else; there were no two ways about it. But Harry didn't _want_ to be the one to do it. Long ago, he found out he would never use the Killing Curse, not on anyone, so he used his favourite red spell instead. Which should have been enough, because his archenemy of eighteen years used his favourite green spell. And when the curse rebounded, Harry saw pure, naked fear in his enemy's eyes, and he knew he'd won –

Except red and green hit at the same time and clashed to emit the most incredibly coloured light – what colour do you get when you mix red and green anyway? Not gold, surely? Harry wouldn't know because he was rubbish at arts back in primary school, but that was beside the point…

The Great Hall exploded in a golden light.

It was nothing like what Harry had known before. It wasn't the exhilarating silver light of the Patronus. It wasn't the dangerous, all-consuming brightness of the Fiendfyre. But as the world lit up even after he shut his eyes tight to avoid turning blind, the light brought a feeling that was good and clean and pure and… _magic_.

When eventually the light receded and Harry managed to open his eyes, his sworn enemy was no more. In his place was a slender teenage boy with dark chestnut hair, wide-eyed but composed… _Tom Riddle Jr._ From the diary, from Dumbledore's memories – Harry could recognize him anywhere, and judging from the gasps of several Order members behind him, they did too. By instinct, Harry had levelled his wand at the boy, whose eyes flickered to the Elder wand now lying on the ground halfway between them, as if calculating whether he had time to make a move. But then the boy looked up and met Harry's gaze, and Harry could swear that there was something in those clear blue eyes, something so different from what he was used to seeing in those slitted red ones and it had nothing to do with the shape or colour. Something … _significant_ , and Harry almost felt compelled to lower his wand.

For a few long, long moments, the entire Hall seemed to be frozen in place by shock. One could taste the confusion in the air, and nobody made a sound. Until someone in the crowd supplied - rather quietly, in fact – "It's a trick – finish him off!" And all hell broke loose. Harry barely had time to take two great leaps forward and shoot a _Protego_ into the air to cover their makeshift arena before spells started to fly all around them – at them, to be precise. Some of those curses were alarmingly green. There was so much sound now compared to the dead silence of two seconds before and Harry was sure his cries for everyone to just _stop_ were drowned out in the frenzy. Everyone's yelling sounded strangely muffled to his ears, as if he'd been underwater. For the second time that night, Harry saw fear flash through Riddle's eyes. The boy's right hand shot out as if to _Accio_ the Elder wand, but before the loyalty of the Hallow could even be tested, Harry felt his shield crack. One pale blue flash of light later, Harry watched his now teenage-looking arch nemesis sink to the ground in agony. A very familiar female voice screamed Harry's name, but it failed to register. Harry's world was slammed into darkness a split second later.


	2. The Boy Who Lived

**Chapter One – The Boy**

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and situations belong to J. .

* * *

 _May 21_ _st_ _, 1998_

 _Hogwarts_

* * *

Harry heard Ron's deep baritone first.

"- absolutely irresponsible of them. I don't even want to think about what could've happened."

And then a girl's voice. "But Professor McDonnagoll was indeed right -" _Hermione._ Harry felt something warm and complete inside him. He opened his eyes and squinted against the whiteness. Hospital wing. _Figured._

"Harry, you're awake!" A squeal, then a warm body latched itself to his chest and most of his vision was obscured by bushy brown hair. In what little open space that remained, his ginger-haired best mate appeared, amusement and sympathy warring openly on his still freckled face. _Glad to see some things never changed._

Hermione pulled back and both his friends grinned at him. His own smile must be huge and rather silly as well. Harry reached over to the nightstand where he found his glasses. His friends seemed all right; tired, definitely, and each with bandages here and there covering the few wounds that magic couldn't immediately heal. Otherwise, they looked better than they did in a while.

"How long was I out?" The requisite first question.

"Oh, a day, give or take. " Ron answered. "It's almost dinner again."

"This long, uh?" Harry slowly propped himself up, waiting for someone to yell at him to stop moving at once. But no one did, and he felt all right except for a dull throbbing in the back of his skull. He reached up with his right hand and located a rather massive bump.

"You're fine, Harry." Hermione said cheerfully. "I just had to stupefy you."

"You – what?"

"So that you would stop standing in the line of fire! I'm sorry, all right?" Hermione didn't _sound_ particularly sorry. "Honestly! What were you thinking? What dunderhead runs toward instead of away from the – the _target_?! And right when people were firing the freakin' Killing Curse!"

Harry searched his brain and came up blank. _Why indeed?_

"Oh, Harry…" Hermione sank down on the side of the bed. "It doesn't matter now. At least you're all right."

Harry traced the bump on the back of his head again.

"Well too bad you had to hit your head on the way down." Ron didn't even try to hide his mirth. Darn him. Then his best friend turned sombre again. "And _we won."_

They won, Harry knew. The worst part was over, once and for all. But he didn't want to think about winning because as soon as he thought about winning, blood and bodies and blank, dead faces would flash by in his mind's eye. Fred, Lupin, Tonks… How many more had they lost before the night was over? Harry wasn't sure he wanted to know. As he saw the redness in his two best friends' eyes, he suspected their tears had been all cried out. He felt he should cry too, but at the moment there was only this terrible … _emptiness_. Like something in him had been eaten from the inside out. He would prefer not to think about the duel either. His victory? Of course he'd always known he wouldn't be _ecstatic_ even if he won. But now? His victory tasted awful. He was wondering if it was all worth it, worth everything everybody had given up, but _of course it was worth it – don't be ridiculous_ … Right? He was thinking about the duel again. Red spell, green spell, golden light… _Wait_. _Golden light?_

"So, Riddle – he's dead, isn't he?" Harry asked tentatively.

Ron scowled at no one in particular. "I wish! I still don't get how and why he is still alive! Must have been hit with a dozen stunners and a whole host of much nastier spells before McGonagall and Shacklebolt made everybody stop. Bastard's heart stopped for quite a while, but they managed to bring him back eventually. I personally don't see why they sodding bothered."

"Ron!" Hermione exclaimed disapprovingly. "It's because we're not a society of savages! The healers as you know took oaths to treat all patients equally, and even the worst criminals are entitled to fair trials because it is the basis of our justice system –"

Ron hmmphed indignantly. Harry had to laugh at his friends' antics.

"- Which, mind you, has been severely lacking in the past few years." Hermione finally stopped to take a breath.

"I'm just sorry to see all the Killing Curses miss." Ron muttered.

"But the process is bound to be expedited, if Kingsley said so himself." Hermione continued. "Once, you know, _he_ is deemed fit to stand trial. It'll be over in no time."

"Where're they keeping him now?"

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look. Harry sort of hated when they did that. "Right down the hall. You see the two Aurors over there?" Harry, with his glasses now on, could indeed spot two red robed wizards standing guard in front of a closed door.

"They obviously believe he's not much of a threat now." Hermione said quickly, as if to reassure Harry. "Otherwise they wouldn't… Azkaban is out of the question. In any case, much of the inhabitable parts of the castle have been converted into wards. The healers apparated in from St Mungo's."

"I need to see him." Harry said, rather abruptly.

"Him as in you-know-who?" Hermione was immediately alarmed.

"Yeah. Think they'll let me?"

"Probably, coz you are you." Ron replied uncertainly. "But _why_?"

Harry shook his head. "I just need to." _For closure_ , Harry supposed he should say, but that didn't sound quite right. He wasn't sure why he needed to see his enemy so badly either.

"Well, why don't we go after dinner? You must be starving. Besides, he's not going anywhere."

Fair enough. And now that he thought about it, Harry realized he really was hungry. He got out of bed and stretched, looking around for something he could change into.

"Oh here's some stuff you can wear. You left them at my place and mom sent them over this morning." Ron pulled out a small trunk from under the bed, and Harry accepted it gratefully.

"Come on." Hermione turned cheery again. "Dinner's in the kitchen. The elves aren't happy about the intrusion, of course, but the Great Hall… You know. They set up a corner where people can grab something quick, although the elves are ready to bite any troublemaker's head off. But I bet they'd be _so_ happy to see you, Harry…"

* * *

The boy looked young, Harry realized with a pang. Younger than the haughty Heir of Slytherin from the diary; much younger than the grown orphan from the memory, who murdered his father in cold blood. Fifteen years old, then, Harry mused. Poetic justice and all that. The boy looked small; pale even against the stark white sheets. And extremely vulnerable. Harry never thought he would ever use this adjective to describe this person, but vulnerability was all that the boy radiated now, with his eyes shut tight against some unknown terror and his breathing shallow.

They were standing in the room at the end of the hospital wing, which used to be a private ward for certain illnesses. Dinner had been a tiresome affair. First the elves _shrieked_ in happiness, all of them, and promised their allegiance to Young Master Harry Potter for eternity. Harry didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, and judging from her expressions, neither did Hermione. Then came the worst part. Even with the relatively small number of people crammed in the corner of the kitchen, the reception of the Saviour of the Light was still overwhelming. Harry contemplated having Kreacher apparated him somewhere to get some peace and quiet, but managed to restrain that urge because boy, wouldn't _that_ be rude.

"Did anybody figure out what exactly happened yesterday?" Harry asked, glancing at the fitfully sleeping boy for emphasis. The bed was near the window, in the other half of the room. Between there and where they stood now was a barrier, humming with energy; a magical version of the one-way glass.

"You mean how Snake-Face didn't die and instead turned into a _kid_?"

"Yeah, that." Harry gave Ron a small smile.

The ginger shook his head. "Man, that's all the Order had to talk about this whole day, but frankly they don't know. Hermione was going to go on a library raid, but … there were other, uh, more _pressing_ matters." The smell of blood and burns and death entered Harry's mind; he didn't wish to know what those pressing matters were.

"Someone said he probably did it to himself, but that's ridiculous. Why would he do that? To gain sympathy because people might forget he was a monster just cause he's physically a child? That's a stretch."

"Besides, we all saw what happened. There wasn't time." Hermione added. "So the only viable theory is: something happened when the Killing Curse clashed with your Expelliarmus, but no one's heard of anything like this before. It's not like we can _test_ it on somebody."

"Of course not." Harry said. "This is really peculiar. I guess we'd need someone who's brilliant at magical theory…"

"The interesting thing is when the Aurors tested him earlier so they could cast the right binding spell? They found he had very little magic left. Almost squib level, they said; he can hardly do anything."

"Serves him right." Ron stated darkly. Harry absent-mindedly agreed. They stood and watched in silence. The boy was tense at moments, but still unconscious. "Can we go now, mate? He's not waking up. Besides I don't really fancy _talking to him_." Ron scrunched up his face.

Harry chuckled. "No, you wouldn't. You guys go ahead. I'm staying for a while."

His friends fixed him with incredulous looks, and Harry figured he deserved them. But he stood his ground and they eventually left, probably eager to turn in early themselves. The Aurors regarded him pointedly before closing the heavy door with a thud. The last rays of the blood red sunset sneaked inside and landed on the bed, making the boy look a little more alive. Harry crossed the barrier and flopped down in the armchair by the foot of the bed, waiting patiently. For what, he didn't exactly know.

* * *

Tom Marvolo Riddle woke to an eerie quietness. His first semi-coherent thought was that everything hurt. He searched through his memory and found no recollection of engaging in any potentially dangerous activities as of late. Wasn't he just about to board the train to London? What in Salazar's name happened? His still foggy brain supplied a term: the Final Battle… what? What final battle? It sounded like something from Zabini's favourite muggle fantasy novel, the one with the insanely powerful ring and sword brandishing morons and laughably incompetent wizards. Riddle didn't recall going through a final battle… Was he in a duel? That would explain the injuries. But getting into fights was really more Orion's thing, and as a rule, when Tom Riddle got into duels, he _did not lose_. Then it came back to him: loud voices, curses flying from every direction, people trying to kill him. And one single thought: _run_.

He tried to scramble out of bed, but his legs gave out the instant they touched the ground. Suddenly it was very hard to breathe as a sharp pain exploded in his chest. For a few painful moments, he could only lay wheezing on the ground. What was wrong with him? He didn't remember… His vision eventually cleared a little and he instantly recognized where he was – the hospital wing. Hogwarts. Safe. _Home_. His whirring mind calmed down a little and he forced the panic away with a few deep breaths, careful not to hurt himself again. He managed to sit up leaning against one of the bedposts – his head hurt savagely - and felt the urge to panic again when he saw a wand pointed at his face.

But never let it be said that Tom Riddle scared easily. He blinked hard and took a good look at his potential attacker. It was a young man – a boy, really. No older than seventeen or eighteen. He had messy black hair and green eyes that peered out from black rimmed glasses with an intensity that could match his own. His clothes were truly peculiar: a white shirt with some silly logo that he couldn't recognize and a pair of strange blue trousers. Some kind of muggle fashion? But the muggles didn't have the time or money for fashion nowadays, did they? What with the war against that ridiculous little dictator in Germany… The man with the wand looked oddly familiar. As if Riddle had seen him before. As if he was important. But for the love of life he couldn't recall why. Then he realized who this man reminded him of: Charlus Potter, a sixth year _Gryffindor_. This man in front of him looked so similar to Potter that they must be related. An older brother, most likely. So a seventh year, perhaps?

Having made a cursory guess at the stranger's identity, Riddle slowly attempted to push himself up from the bedpost. Not a good idea, as the room started spinning violently and the green-eyed man shouted "Stay where you are, Riddle!"

 _He knows my name. Curious_. Riddle considered this as he leaned back against the bed sheet, closing his eyes so his vision might stop spinning, hopefully. Although that wasn't really an unusual occurrence - everyone at school knew his name. Being Top of Form five years in a row and then Prefect did that to one's name recognition. There were sounds from the other side of the room, the door shoved open and people running in. "Hold it! I can handle it!" The Potter look-alike ordered immediately, and the footsteps ceased. Riddle couldn't see anything anyway because all the excitement was on the other side of the large four-poster and that had proven to be quite the insurmountable obstacle for him. Why did people obey this man's – this boy's – command?

When Riddle finally opened his eyes, the man was still training his wand at him. "Now that's right. I won't hurt you but you're well and truly _done_ , Riddle. The war is over and you lost. I was thinking you might have a new perspective now since everything…" At that point Riddle had tuned him out. He wished this bloke would stop talking nonsense. Just what war was he speaking of? Grindelwald? But that was last year's news. The Battle of Britain war? But last he heard, that insane German with the ridiculous beard was having a lot of fun in Russia. Was this one of Orion's "improv" sessions that he somehow didn't hear about?

* * *

"The war - what? … Since when do we care about muggle wars?" The boy was staring at Harry as if he'd grown another head. A sinking feeling formed in Harry's stomach and he didn't like it one bit. The Dark Lord didn't remember the war _he just lost_?

Then Riddle's expression turned a wee bit sinister. "Well, if this is one of Orion's idiotic pranks backfiring _again,_ I swear I'll skin that mutt alive -"

"Orion?" Where had Harry heard this name before…

"Orion Black? Tall, long black hair, playboy, only redeeming quality being a sharp nose and canine-like loyalty - that Orion?" The boy was rather suspicious by now. "Do you go to Hogwarts at all? Aren't you a relative of that silly Potter boy in Gryffindor?"

Potter boy – wait, Orion _Black_? That Orion Black, Sirius' father, dark wizard whose name and memory was forever etched into Grimmauld Place, who went to Hogwarts nearly sixty years ago. During World War Two – _since when do we care about muggle wars_? When Harry's grandfather was but a lad – _that silly Potter boy_ … When the Dark Lord himself went to school. _Merlin's beard_.

No. _No, no, no, no, no. That's just… not fair._ Harry was still gaping at the fifteen-year-old Tom Riddle, that sinking feeling growing unbearable. Everything made a little more sense, but – _why_? Just why did his life have to be so complicated all the time? He would expect Riddle to be a great actor, but something told Harry the boy wasn't acting. That this was not a trick. That this was a whole, whole new level of messed up. Eventually, Harry sighed and crouched down so he was on eye level with his very harmless and very confused archenemy. "You really don't remember _anything_ , do you?"


End file.
